The present invention generally relates to monitoring the operating state of a complex electronic system.
Monitoring the operational state of electronic systems is commonly performed to detect problems, take precautionary measures before problems occur, or inform users, for example. Systems that include many distributed components present unique challenges for managing the operational state of the system and the various components. Example operational states include starting up, standby, shutting down, and other states governed by the particular system. Based on transitions among the operational states, the system may take various actions. For example, the system may perform various automated actions, alert an operator for manual intervention, or generate informational messages.
For large systems that include many components, managing the state-related interactions between components and monitoring the states of all the components can be complicated. For example, in a system having a large number of components, the number of different combinations of states of the different components can be very large, thereby complicating monitoring the different states. In addition, the system may be comprised of a hierarchy of constituent components. The constituent components may need to respond to state changes in other components at various levels in the hierarchy.
In addition, the system may be geographically dispersed. In this case it may be important to minimize that amount of data traffic among components required to satisfy the monitoring requirements.
Thus, an arrangement that supports monitoring the system state, the states of the individual ones of the constituent components, as well as inter-component state monitoring tends to be complex.
A system and a method that addresses the aforementioned problems, as well as other related problems, are therefore desirable.
In various embodiments, the invention provides a system and method for managing and communicating state changes of a complex system. The system includes a plurality of configuration items, wherein each configuration item is a functional component of the system and has an associated state value that is one of a set of state values describing operational characteristics of the configuration item. A data structure that represents transitions between the state values is constructed in each of the configuration items. Each of the configuration items receives notification requests that include a first set of state values, a second set of state values, a requester identifier, and a message value. The requester identifier and message value of each notification request are associated with a transition in the data structure of the configuration item from a state in the first set of state values to a state value in the second set of state values. In response to such a transition of a configuration item between state values, a message value(s) and requester identifier(s) that are associated with the transition are selected, and the message value(s) is sent to the requester(s) referenced by the requester identifier(s).
It will be appreciated that various other embodiments are set forth in the Detailed Description and Claims which follow.